Prohibition

Prohibition, legal prevention of the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages with the aim of obtaining partial or total abstinence through legal means. Some attempts at prohibition were made in Aztec society, ancient China, feudal Japan, the Polynesian islands, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Canada, and India, but only a few countries—most notably, certain Muslim countries—have maintained national prohibition. Most countries that have experimented with the ban have soon lifted it. Finland, for instance, adopted prohibition in 1919 and repealed it in 1931, and the United States adopted it in 1919 and repealed it in 1933.

In northern European countries liquor control has reflected concern for the prevention of alcoholism. The Finnish prohibition outlawed the sale of spirits in an attempt to redirect the population toward greater consumption of beer (with lower alcoholic content). Sweden experimented with a system of liquor-ration books with the aim of limiting the individual’s use of liquor.

Various cultures differ considerably in their attitudes toward drinking as well as their systems of control. Among the Japanese, for example, drunkenness is not strongly condemned, and the drunkard is simply prevented from harming himself or others. Other cultures may show high acceptance of drinking as a social custom with a norm directing moderate use. With regard to control, efforts have been directed toward the drinker, as in Sweden, or toward the seller, as in the United States.

In the United States an early wave of movements for state and local prohibition arose out of the intensive religious revivalism of the 1820s and ’30s, which stimulated movements toward perfectionism in human beings, including temperance and the abolition of slavery. The precedent for seeking temperance through law was set by a Massachusetts law, passed in 1838 and repealed two years later, which prohibited sales of spirits in less than 15-gallon quantities. The first state prohibition law was passed in Maine in 1846 and ushered in a wave of such state legislation before the Civil War.

The drive for national prohibition emerged out of a renewed attack on the sale of liquor in many states after 1906. The underlying forces at work to support national prohibition included antipathy to the growth of cities (the presumed scene of most drinking), evangelical Protestant middle-class anti-alien and anti-Roman Catholic sentiment, and rural domination of the state legislatures, without which ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment would have been impossible. Other forces included the corruption existing in the saloons and the industrial employers’ increased concern for preventing accidents and increasing the efficiency of workers.

The Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1893, led the state prohibition drives of 1906–13. During World War I a temporary Wartime Prohibition Act was passed to save grain for use as food. By January 1920 prohibition was already in effect in 33 states covering 63 percent of the total population. In 1917 the resolution for submission of the Prohibition Amendment to the states received the necessary two-thirds vote in Congress; the amendment was ratified on Jan. 29, 1919, and went into effect on Jan. 29, 1920. On Oct. 28, 1919, the National Prohibition Act, popularly known as the Volstead Act (after its promoter, Congressman Andrew J. Volstead), was enacted, providing enforcement guidelines.

Federal government support of enforcement of Prohibition varied considerably during the 1920s. Illegal manufacture and sales of liquor went on in the United States on a large scale. In general, Prohibition was enforced wherever the population was sympathetic to it. In the large cities, where sentiment was strongly opposed to Prohibition, enforcement was much weaker than in rural areas and small towns. Increased price of liquor and beer, however, meant that the working classes probably bore the restrictions of urban Prohibition to a far greater degree than the middle-class or upper class segments of the population.

Prohibition brought into being a new kind of criminal—the bootlegger. The career of Al Capone was a dramatic instance of the development of bootlegging on a large scale. His annual earnings were estimated at $60,000,000. The rise of the bootlegging gangs led to a succession of gang wars and murders. A notorious incident was the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago in 1929, when the Capone gang shot to death seven members of the rival “Bugs” Moran gang. Historians of the underworld, however, suggest that by the late 1920s bootlegging was on the verge of semimonopoly control and that the end of gang wars was approaching.

The temperance movement itself changed during the 1920s; the fundamentalist and nativist groups assumed greater leadership, tending to drive away less hostile and urban forces.

Major supporters of Prohibition gradually became disenchanted with it, citing the increase in criminal liquor production and sale, the development of the speakeasy, and increased restriction on individual freedom as its results. In 1932 the Democratic Party adopted a platform calling for repeal, and the Democratic victory in the presidential election of 1932 sounded the death knell of the Eighteenth Amendment.

In February 1933 Congress adopted a resolution proposing the Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution to repeal the Eighteenth. On Dec. 5, 1933, Utah became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, and repeal was achieved. After repeal a few states continued statewide prohibition, but by 1966 all had abandoned it. In general, liquor control in the United States came to be determined more and more at local levels.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Jeannette L. Nolen, Assistant Editor.

Inspire your inbox –
Sign up for daily fun facts about this day in history, updates, and special offers.

By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Click here to view our Privacy Notice. Easy unsubscribe links are provided in every email.

Thank you for subscribing!

Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox.